


saints and sightseers.

by katarama



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: And Henry’s kidnapping, Discussions of Gansey’s death, Friends to Lovers, Kissing, Multi, Nightmares, Polyamory, Road Trips, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24152893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: Gansey just knew he needed to go.  He didn’t care where they went.
Relationships: Henry Cheng/Richard Gansey III, Henry Cheng/Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent
Comments: 10
Kudos: 76





	saints and sightseers.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SummerFrost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerFrost/gifts).



> Happy Multiamory May! For SummerFrost, who did not bat an eye when I asked for prompts for a fandom they aren’t in.
> 
> From [my a softer world prompt meme](https://sleepy-skittles.tumblr.com/post/155287327552/50-a-softer-world-prompts), they prompted [We talk in the dark as we fall asleep, and we are objects in the night sky outside of time. (it is the exact opposite of alone.)](http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=917) \+ Sarchengsey
> 
> Extra thanks to Verbyna for the beta and rjosettes for the Moral Support.

Gansey stands in a clearing, surrounded by trees.

The woods stretch on for miles. He doesn’t see it so much as know it, the way he knows when his sister’s eyes light up that he’s about to be roped into something he hates, the way he knows just how far a warm smile and an earnest compliment and a firm handshake will get him. He knows the feeling of the roots in the earth, knows the pattern to the slow, uneven drag of time, knows the babbling of the creek that is not water.

Gansey does not stand in the clearing. Gansey is part of the clearing.

The trees whisper, and this time it is not Latin. Gansey understands without understanding. Gansey speaks for them, words flowing from his mouth, the language familiar but the meaning beyond him.

A shadow appears, the barest smudge against the light. A stranger is in the clearing. Gansey has been talking to this shadow, he realizes. The message from the trees is for its benefit. Except, Gansey looks again, and it is not a shadow, or a stranger. There is a body, clear as day, and it is now on the forest floor, vines slowly wrapping around it, preparing to swallow it into the earth. The body’s face is one that Gansey knows instinctively, in the way he knows each vein of each leaf of each tree, but Gansey finds recognition just out of reach, frustratingly elusive.

“You are Cabeswater and Cabeswater is you,” his mouth says, in English. He strains to think of how he knows this body, the shape of its hands or the curve of its spine, curled into itself on the ground. He looks at the body’s clothes, its shoes, and it slams into him all at once. He knows the glasses he wears when his eyes are tired, the khakis and polo shirt Blue constantly teases him for.

“Do not forget what you are,” his mouth says, and Gansey’s awareness suddenly expands. He is both the body and outside of it, a pair of lungs tightening and a stomach clenching in panic as the vines squeeze his ribs and the vines desperately clinging to the few scraps of humanity they know. He is eyes squeezed shut and every blade of grass pressed down by his own weight, and every inch of dirt and every beat of every wing on every fly in the clearing and in the woods, and Gansey floods full of everything until his pulse is not one pulse but hundreds of disparate heartbeats, all out of time and-

Gansey gasps for breath, jerking up out of bed, his eyes adjusting to the dim light from the IKEA sign across the parking lot from his hotel room. 

He takes a deep breath, feeling the air expand in his real, human lungs, and then takes another. He has one set of lungs, one heartbeat. One pair of bleary eyes with poor vision. Two hands. He runs a careful inventory and takes in the silence, the only sounds the quiet rattling of the air conditioner and the creaking of the bed springs as Henry’s weight shifts next to him, and Blue’s muffled mumbling into the pillow in her sleep from the other bed.

He is alone. He is himself.

It has been a few months since Cabeswater died ( _since you died_ , he can practically hear Ronan correct, pain and lingering betrayal for being kept in the dark written plainly on his face), and he thought he would have outrun this nightmare by now. He isn’t sure why he thought that, considering that he still has nightmares of bees and woods and ghostly voices speaking of Glendower. He thought maybe death would be easier the second time. He at least had some experience under his belt.

He knows that he is different, though, in a way that has nothing to do with Henrietta, nothing to do with its presence on a ley line, and everything to do with the new reality of his existence. He has never felt less connected to the body he lives in, the 18-year-old face staring back at him in the mirror looking centuries too young.

Gansey takes another deep breath, giving up on the idea of sleep. His chest feels too full and he itches to move, so he decides to indulge himself. He puts his glasses on and scrounges in the dark for clothes and shoes as quietly as he can, throwing on a jacket and shoving his room key and car key in his pocket.

It seems silly to find himself restless in the middle of a road trip, but the desire to move is greater than a hotel room can hold.

* * *

When Gansey drove the new and improved, engineless Pig out of K’s Mitsubishi graveyard, his blood sang with the premise of an adventure. He wasn’t the only one. Blue’s eyes were bright with the promise of seeing the world, and even Henry had gotten a bit caught up in it, talking road trip playlists and essential snacks and travel itineraries. He didn’t drive stick, but he knew a thing or two about planning a good road trip, he insisted, so he would handle the logistics.

Gansey just knew he needed to go. He didn’t care where they went.

Blue took the next turn driving, and Gansey took shotgun. He rested his hand warm and solid on her knee, like it was something that could be casual, like it wasn’t telegraphing more. It was hours of her bringing her gaze to his, sense memories of the cool night air and Blue’s fist clenched around Pig’s clutch, her eyes bright and wild, their faces pressed as close as they could be without closing the gap.

She kissed him at the first rest stop. She kissed him once, and then kissed him again, her mouth tasting of cinnamon candy and urgency, because he was alive and she was alive, and the world was all laid out in front of them.

Gansey didn’t think he would ever get used to it. 

“Do you need a room to yourself tonight?” Henry asked Gansey quietly when it switched back to his turn to drive, Blue dozing in the back seat. The question caught Gansey by surprise, but his response, “No, of course not,” seemed so obvious as not to require thought.

“I don’t mind,” Henry had said, except that Gansey thinks he did, and it didn’t matter, anyway. He didn’t plan on doing anything with Blue that he was afraid to do in front of Henry, even if there was a wildness, a hunger, tearing a hole in him now that he could just _have_ things. Have whatever they both wanted, without fear of an impending death.

“I do,” Gansey replied. Henry scrutinized his expression, as if searching for pity or self-sacrifice.

Finding none, he breathed out.

“You know, Richardman,” he said, his tone casual, even if his words were not. “You have a lot of patience for a dead man.”

Gansey did not correct him, did not point out that he is alive. That he has been almost dead and actually dead, but that he is currently alive, and that he has never been more aware of that fact. 

“Sometimes there are things worth being patient for,” he replied, and Henry slowly smiled.

* * *

Gansey cranks the windows down, but leaves the engine off, the key dangling from the ignition. He stares at the giant IKEA sign as if it might do something other than bathe the parking lot in unnatural yellow light. Gansey admitted to Blue when they pulled into the parking lot for the night that he wasn’t sure why a town this small needed an IKEA this big, but upon googling, they realized that it was the only one in this part of the state. He guesses it must make some business sense.

He checks the car radio clock for the time, but it is broken, just like in his Pig. He fiddles around with Google maps on his phone, playing with the idea of going somewhere. The parking lot enters out onto a side road. To the left, drive five minutes, and there’s the highway. To the right, there’s only corn and silos, barns and farmhouses for miles.

He is zooming out with his fingers when the passenger side door opens and Henry slides in.

“Think you were going to take off without us?” Henry asks. It’s a question made for fishing, because they both know that Gansey isn’t doing that, that he wouldn’t. 

At least, not without coming back.

They’ve been on the road for a few weeks, now. Henry says it’s been a crash course in all things Gansey, but Gansey thinks it’s just detail work in a painting Henry had mostly finished already. There has rarely been a moment when he has been around Henry and not felt stripped bare, like Henry found a map somewhere in the tunnels under the school of all of Gansey’s quietest thrills and desires and has been slowly pressing against them, one by one. 

Henry is a part of that map himself, a quiet thrill and an even quieter desire. Not quiet to Blue, who has been more encouraging than Gansey thinks is necessarily appropriate. But Gansey wonders often if Henry knows, and the idea of it is both more nerve wracking and more exciting than Gansey would like to admit.

Henry stares at Gansey expectantly, like he’s still waiting on an answer. Gansey can see how the moment could split in two directions. In one direction, the easier one, the one Gansey desperately wants to pick, he lies, says that he just needed some air. Henry leaves it be. They go back to the hotel room, and they both toss and turn in their shared queen, left alone with their thoughts and the knowledge that words went unsaid.

In the other direction lies the truth.

“I needed something to do with my hands,” Gansey says, the words coming carefully. Uncharastically hesitant, as if not sure what the words will do when they meet the open air. “I. Needed to feel like they were still mine.”

“You’ll need to turn the car on first, then,” Henry says. His voice is mild, but his eyes are intent and appraising, the way they always are when Gansey gives him something real. When Gansey trusts him, and it’s his turn to return the favor. 

It has heat pooling in Gansey’s gut, the wildness clawing at his chest to let it free, to let him act recklessly, for once. To let himself burn.

Gansey turns the key in the ignition, and the car roars to life.

He doesn’t think there’s any going back from here.

* * *

Henry takes Gansey’s phone from Gansey’s hand and sets it in his own lap. He tells Gansey to turn right out of the parking lot, and Gansey listens. Henry tells Gansey to drive, to keep driving, to drive faster, and Gansey listens. Henry tells Gansey to turn the radio off, to keep the windows down, to just keep driving, and Gansey always listens.

Gansey’s heart is beating out of his chest with every calm instruction, with the dissonance of Henry’s even voice and the way Henry is staring at him like he wants to take as much of Gansey as Gansey is willing to give.

He hopes he isn’t imagining it, that it means what he thinks it does.

They drive for five minutes, then ten, then more, Gansey losing track of time with his foot on the gas and his hands on the steering wheel. The wind whips through the open windows, the cool summer air tugging at Gansey’s hair and rushing in his ears. They are far enough away from the main road that Henry shouts out of the window and into the open air, his words carried away by the wind and lost in the big, empty night. He turns his face back in towards Gansey, laughter big and bright and bold on his face, his hair loose and wild.

Gansey has a better idea of what he wants to do with his hands. Maybe not tonight, but in the future.

He drives until Henry tells him to stop, to pull the car off onto a short dirt path and kill the engine.

“Where are we?” Gansey asks, as if Henry might know. The air is cooler away from the highway, the only sounds the rustling of the corn in the wind and the quiet chirping of crickets. It doesn’t really matter where they are, like it didn’t really matter where they were going.

“We’re alone,” Henry says, which is an answer and not. They are alone. They’re as alone as they’ve been since the night Gansey died, the night they found Glendower. It doesn’t feel like being alone, to Gansey. “Let’s get out of the car.”

On another night, under other circumstances, Gansey would have more questions. Asking where they’re going and why this spot, concerned that they are trespassing on private property. Tonight, with something more thrumming in his veins, he agrees, getting out of the car and following Henry as Henry grabs a blanket from the trunk, throwing it on the dew damp grass.

“Lie down and look up.”

The air is too cool and blades of grass stick to Gansey’s shoes, but it seems less important than plopping down on the blanket next to Henry, the skin of their arms brushing and sending shivers down Gansey’s spine.

The stars are brighter than Gansey thinks he has seen them in his life, pinpricks of light in the clear night sky. He looks for the shapes he knows and makes some new shapes of his own in his head, connecting dots whether they should be connected or not. He thinks he understands what Henry is doing. Trying to make his problems feel small, in the scheme of things. Or remembering that the darkness makes Gansey’s instincts louder. Either way, he appreciates Henry trying. It’s enough to inspire honesty.

“I am having the nightmare again,” he admits, before Henry can ask. “That same one, again and again. It would almost be easier if it were a new one. It would seem like less of a message, less of a. Reminder. That I came back different. That I’m not like I was before. I forget things, sometimes, memories that were only mine, from when I was little. A lot of people forget things from when they were little, but Helen will sometimes tell a story, and it’s like learning it for the first time, instead of remembering. Sometimes I remember things that were not mine to remember, things Cabeswater took from the others. Adam, especially. I constantly want to apologize to him, but. He just tells me he knows what he gave up, and that he doesn’t regret it. It’s hard to feel like myself when I was cobbled together in pieces, and none of them fit together just right. I barely feel like I’m wearing my own skin.”

He takes a slow, ragged breath, then another. “I just want to feel like myself again. It didn’t used to be this hard. I know it was different for you, less supernatural, but did you feel this... disconnected? After you were kidnapped?”

Henry is quiet, his eyes fixed on the stars as a cloud slowly rolls overhead and drifts away again. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “It’s not the same, but. In a way I did. I went somewhere else, in my head, to get through it.” Henry pauses again, to put together the right words. “I reacted physically in ways I didn’t always expect, for a long time, after. It was like the terror was a physical reaction to everything, even when I felt in my head like I should be okay. I checked out a lot. Things still. I’m still afraid sometimes. I still get nightmares. You know how that feels, this isn’t your first time around the block.”

Gansey does. Gansey does know. He just thought that knowing would make this easier.

It doesn’t.

“I’m glad I met you,” he says, his voice bare. “Blue’s glad, and I’m glad, I. Don’t know anyone else like you, Henry Cheng.”

Henry grabs Gansey’s hand and squeezes, and doesn’t let go. Gansey doesn’t know how much time passes that way, his hand in Henry’s, his skin covered in goosebumps, his heart caught in his throat, keeping him from saying a list of things he wants desperately to let out into the open sky.

He doesn’t say any of them, but Henry doesn’t let go.

Finally, Gansey’s eyelids start to droop, and they decide to head back. Henry’s voice seems quieter against the wind as he directs Gansey back to the hotel, but Gansey is more attuned to it. The drive back seems much faster than the drive there was, and Gansey lets himself wonder if it’s a Cabeswater thing or a human thing before he releases the thought from his head.

The Pig’s clock still does not work. 

Their parking spot is empty when they return, and Henry finally hands back Gansey’s phone. Gansey pockets it without looking, and Henry catches Gansey’s hand.

“I like you, too,” he says. “I told Blue once that I was Henrysexual. I was joking, but I also wasn’t. For her, it was intended to be a reassurance. For you, it’s a warning. I told you once that meeting you felt like a _we_ , not a _you_ and _me_. But I may not always be careful with you, GanseyMan. For someone who has to be careful about everything, I’m not always as careful as I should be.”

“The last thing I want right now is another person being too careful with me.”

There was a subtle distinction to be made there, between too careful and careful, but Henry doesn’t make it. Instead, he leans across the stick shift and kisses Gansey, soft and slow and intent. They kiss and kiss again, Gansey relaxing into the feeling of Henry’s mouth on his but never deepening things, never letting things get too heated. Gansey’s fingers itch to dig into Henry’s hair, to make an even bigger mess of it, but he holds himself in check.

 _Later_ he promises himself. 

He hopes it is a promise he will be able to keep.

* * *

When Gansey finally lets himself check the time, it’s nearly three in the morning. He knows he will be sleeping in the Pig tomorrow, which isn’t ideal, but he can’t find himself minding. There are some things worth losing sleep over, and as he looks over to Henry brushing his teeth and sliding into bed next to Gansey, he is certain that this is one of them.

“Blue is going to be thrilled this happened and disappointed she missed it,” Gansey whispers. 

“It’s a good thing we have plenty of time for a repeat where she can see it.”

It is that thought that carries Gansey to sleep. He has months of this ahead of him, kissing Blue and kissing Henry and being out on the open road. For once, time doesn’t matter. Gansey is alive, and he has all the time in the world.

That is a deeply hopeful thought, in a way it wasn’t four hours before.

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr at [sleepy-skittles](https://sleepy-skittles.tumblr.com/)


End file.
